Dissolved SACET means new evaluation process

John Delap Guest Writer

From September 2001 through May 2005, I served on the Student Advisory Committee on the Evaluation of Teaching (SACET). In the fall of 2001, SACET was comprised of seven students: five elected representatives of the academic divisions, the Vassar Student Association (VSA) Academic Executive, and an appointed Chair. The committee was charged with writing letters of recommendation relaying an affirmative or negative position regarding a particular candidate’s reappointment or promotion. Near the close of each semester, these letters of recommendation would be sent to the Faculty Appointments and Salary Committee (FASC) where they would comprise one part of a candidate's portfolio.

In crafting these letters, SACET relied on data from Course Evaluation Questionnaires (CEQ) in addition to Majors Committee Evaluations and Advising Evaluations. The latter two instruments were created by the VSA and used by student majors committees to evaluate specific courses and advisors, respectively. After carefully evaluating all of the data available, the members of SACET would discuss the strengths and weaknesses of a candidate’s survey results. Following discussion would be a vote, won by simple majority. One member of the majority opinion would craft a letter, and any dissenters were permitted to contribute a paragraph detailing their reservations. The final version of the letter was then sent along to FASC.

In theory, this system might have worked well. In practice, the process was abominable.

Far too often not a single Majors Committee or Advising Evaluation would exist for a particular course or instructor at all. When we did have evaluations, the open-ended responses to the questions were dubious. Certainly, we came across a fair number of thoughtful, respectful responses, but just as often, responses were off-topic and irrelevant, sometimes including comments on the candidate’s choice of dress or the sound of their voice.

In an attempt to increase the number of survey responses, we met with majors committee chairs and offered to coordinate the necessary administrative support to ensure consistent distribution and collection of the surveys. Despite our efforts, we found little improvement in the response rate, and our focus shifted to improving the evaluative tools themselves, which we found to be, at best, very squeaky instruments.

To do this credibly, SACET voted in the fall of 2003 to suspend writing recommendations. We agreed it was irresponsible for us to continue writing letters based on information we identified as invalid, and we informed both the student body and FASC of our intention to focus our full attention on drafting new Majors Committee and Advising surveys with more focused questions which would provide more reliable data.

We made the decision to split our work into two halves: one to examine the role students should play in the evaluation of faculty members, and the other to craft legitimate and practical evaluative instruments for students that would receive the endorsement of the body such instruments sought to evaluate: the faculty. Input was sought from all constituents. The 2003-2004 academic year was spent engaging in conversations with students, members of the faculty, and the very thoughtful and supportive Dean of the Faculty, Ron Sharp. After thorough consideration, SACET decided to void all existing Majors Committee Evaluations and Advising Evaluations, as they proved, more often then not, to be unreliable and downright unfair.

From there we moved on to our second goal—the crafting of an instrument that would be reliable and fair, and, above all, recognized as valid by both students and faculty. After hearing some dissatisfaction with the advising system from both students and faculty, SACET decided to next focus our efforts on crafting a new Advising Evaluation system.

We set to work on this task in the spring of 2004 realizing that our endeavor would be difficult. Much time was devoted to discussion concerning the questions to appear in the form and other logistics of administration. Eventually, in the spring of 2005, SACET presented our findings to CCP. The membership recommended that an existing task-force subcommittee of CCP take up the issue of how best to measure the academic advising experience.

I graduated from Vassar in May 2005. I hoped then, as I hope now, that students will continue to work towards finding a system of student participation in the faculty evaluation process that the faculty is comfortable with. If the faculty does not respect or understand the students’ system for evaluating their work, how can they be expected to take student recommendations seriously? The best and most effective way for students’ voice to be heard in the faculty evaluation process is for both parties to endorse the instruments being utilized.

Knowing all this, I applaud and support Academic Executive Rebecca Worthington’s decision to dissolve SACET as it existed. The work we were doing was more appropriate for an ad hoc task force, a committee I sincerely hope the Vassar Student Association will create to continue engaging in discussions of student involvement in faculty evaluation. Decisions concerning faculty reappointment and promotion are far too serious to not take steps towards making the evaluation process more reliable, valid and just for all involved.

Editor’s Note: John Delap ’05 served as VSA Academic Executive during the 2004-2005 academic year.